The first time I ever heard of Twitter was about a year ago through a facebook newsfeed pulled from my friend Peter’s status that read: “I am twittering.” Twittering? Too much coffee? Work deadlines? Big date? I soon forgot about the slightly strange choice of word and went back to my facebook perusing. A few days later I read a vague news article that mentioned a new “microblogging site” called Twitter. Hmm…where have I heard that word used before I thought? While I consider myself to be fairly social media savvy (a year ago I purchased Larry’s Weber ahead-of-the-times book Marketing to the Social Web circa 2007, which has no listing for Twitter in the index), it wasn’t until one night over dinner when a friend asked me “so, have you heard of this Twitter thing?” that I really started to put the pieces together.
Later that night I signed up for my own site and within a day a friend from my running club signed up as my first official “follower.” I tried to add friends through my email aol address book but the site said “importing from aol has been temporarily disabled.” Because most of my contacts were in this address book, I became quickly disenchanted and Twitter went to the wayside.
A few weeks ago, my manager and I decided to look more closely at Twitter, and in essence, do a little exploring. Since setting foot in the world of tweeters, I have to admit that I am amazed at the possibilities for collaborative sharing – all of which are entirely new to me. I started following a few champion tweeters – some of whom are social media aficionados with suggested articles and best practices so prolific it is no wonder that they have a following the size of Rhode Island, and some of whom are simply poetic micro-bloggers that infiltrate the list of tweets with inspired ponderings. Regardless of the melodies I hear (read), I am eager to adventure more into this unchartered twittersphere.
And with this I start my Twitter journey. Over the next month I will chart my course with interesting discoveries, trends, and learned do-s and don’t-s.
If you care to join me, I will be blogging for the next 30 days. Or if you care to follow me on twitter, you can find me at: http://twitter.com/exilauren